Martin Ferris (Kerry North-West Limerick, Sinn Fein)
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214. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine if he will deal with a scenario where parties to partnership agreements between older and younger farmers, which have not yet been processed by his Department due to technical difficulties, cannot access the green low-carbon agri-environment scheme within the current deadline of 14 December 2015, the alternative for these farmers; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [44788/15]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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Any partnership which submitted a 2015 claim for the Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) was eligible to apply for GLAS under both tranches 1 and 2. However, partnerships which were created after the closing date for the 2015 BPS were not eligible to apply for GLAS because the BPS declaration on which the application is founded was not made in the name of that partnership, but rather in the name of its individual members. This is the same rule that applies to individual applicants, i.e. a BPS declaration must have been submitted for 2015 in the name of the proposed GLAS applicant. It is important to note that individual members of these new partnerships remained eligible to submit applications for GLAS Tranches 1 or 2 in their own right, and of course these partnerships will be perfectly entitled to make an application as a partnership now under Tranche 3.

I am aware, however, that there were a small number of cases where members of a newly established partnership found themselves unable to submit individual applications under the current tranche, as the agent-client links based on their original herd numbers had been broken. In these cases the applicants should contact my Department and arrangements will be made to facilitate the submission of applications under the individual herd numbers.